Spanish lawmakers have watered down outright calls for a Palestinian state after the ruling party passed a symbolic motion late Tuesday. The non-binding motion put forward by the socialists had initially urged the Madrid government to recognize Palestine, reports GHN based on RT.
The amended resolution was less ambitious than the Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo had hoped for.
"We have the feeling that time is running out. Either we do something fairly quickly or the two state solution will be physically impossible," he told reporters Monday.
But at the last minute the People's Party (PP) which hold an absolute majority in the lower house proposed a weakening of the motion to placate the Israeli government which is reeling from Tuesday's terrorist attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem, in which five people died.
"The Spanish parliament urges the government to encourage the recognition of Palestine as a state... This recognition should be the consequence of a process negotiated between the parties that guarantees peace and security for both," the wording proposed by the PP said.